Washlava raises $1 million, lays groundwork for bigger deal

Washlava, a Tampa company that brought technology to laundry experiences, has raised $1.05 million in what founder and CEO Todd Belveal described as a bridge financing.

Belveal said the latest funding will keep the company on track while it finalizes a bigger deal that he expects to unveil soon.

Washlava has developed technology that lets users reserve and pay for clothes washers and dryers with their smart phones, disrupting the traditional cash-only business model that relied on coins or tokens, according to the patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Jan. 1.

“We’re trying to make laundry better for people,” Belveal told the St. Pete Catalyst.

The company — officially named Laundry 2.0 LLC —  had funded $837,336 of the $1.05 million equity offering when it disclosed the capital raise last week in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Since then, the offering has been fully funded, all of it by existing investors, Belveal said.

It’s at least the fourth capital raise for Washlava, which has raised about $4 million to date, according to public filings.

Before launching Washlava, Belveal held leadership positions at Accenture, Kurt Salmon Associates, and Tiffany & Co.

He co-founded his first startup in 2012. That company, Silvercar, based in Austin, Texas, was a mobile-enabled car rental startup that moved the entire car rental process to the smartphone, from booking and paying for a rental to unlocking the car itself. Silvercar was acquired by Audi in 2017. Audi was a major investor in Silvercar prior to the acquisition.

Washlava has a laundromat in Carrollwood as well as one in Queens, New York that opened last August. Washlava also did a full-scale campus rollout at Monmouth University in New Jersey. The technology can be found at laundromats at three apartment buildings in Tampa, Orlando and Austin, as well as the Courtyard Marriott in Orlando.